The story of the award winning artist and her unique embroidery designs

In this week’s blog post we are featuring an embroiderer with a truly unique style. We are also offering three of her beautiful and brand new Valentine’s Day themed embroidery designs to be downloaded for FREE. You will still have plenty of time to stitch them out for yourself or someone truly special.

Although still relatively new to machine embroidery, Nicola Elliott is already making a name for herself in embroidery circles successfully selling her sometimes quirky, but mostly daintily beautiful embroidery designs on her website Picturestitch.co.uk. She recently won a New Comers award for her “Dark Fairytale” collection and was featured in her local newspaper. Her social media following is also steadily growing with currently over 2,000 members in her Facebook group.

Nicola has been using her Hatch Embroidery Digitizer software to create her embroidery designs and she is absolutely thrilled how it helped to bring her artwork to life. We asked Nicola about her story and unique embroidery style.

How long have you been doing embroidery for?

I started free motion stitch embroidery in 2013 after having to give up my job as a teaching assistant because of crohn’s disease.

What made you take up machine embroidery?

I felt the need to draw and create something unique. When I got ill, my husband bought me a sewing machine, so I started to use my needle to draw with stitch. Before that I had only used a sewing machine once at school.

What do you like about machine embroidery the most?

I love watching my drawings come to life right before my eyes and knowing I can share my work with others. With my new exclusive Forever Mine collection it is all about feeling and drawing emotional designs that are brought to life in stitch. It gives me a warm feeling inside.

What is PictureStitch about? How did you start the business?

PictureStitch started about 18 month ago. Because I was creating Free motion stitch embroidery, people were asking me if I would sell my work as machine embroidery designs. People seemed to love the uniqueness of my work as all my designs are signed with my signature Heart. At present there is not much out there in terms of hand drawn machine embroidery designs. So that is how PictureStitch was born. In the last 12 months the feedback has been overwhelming at times for the love of my work. I feel I am truly blessed with this talent and I want to share it with as many people as possible.

What is your special technique that makes your designs so unique?

I hand draw all my own work, just with pencil on paper. A lot of my PictureStitch designs are without full fills. I prefer my designs to be simple and speak for themselves. I like to think out of the box when drawing my work.

How would you describe your artistic style?

Some of my designs are a bit on the dark side, but they are really popular. Customers absolutely loved my Dark Fairytale collection. But I am really excited about my new Valentine and Forever Mine collections which are packed with love themed designs and selling very well.

What is your motto?

Always believe in yourself and that different can be extremely beautiful.

What kind of embroidery software have you used before?

I first started with Embird, but I mainly use Hatch Embroidery Digitizer at present because it has everything I need to bring my designs to life.

What is it that you like about Hatch Embroidery software?

Everything!!! Hatch is so user friendly, easy to understand and has all the tools you will ever need. The price is fantastic and the support from Hatch and Wilcom have been second to none.

What features and tools of Hatch do you use for your embroidery?

I absolutely love the branching tool and the different stitch patterns that are available.

How does Hatch help you to bring your drawings to life?

I love how I can easily import my drawings into Hatch and using the branching tool I can tie parts of my designs together.

What are your aspirations for the next 12 months for your business?

For the future I would like to do more collections and I would absolutely love for my embroidery designs to be seen all over the world. I am also thinking of maybe creating a fabric collection hand drawn by myself to compliment my embroidery designs.

What advice would you give to others who want to start doing machine embroidery?

Please note: You will need to sign in or register a free account to be able to download the free design.

Once you registered an account, you will have unlimited access to ALL the free designs that are currently on the Hatch Embroidery website and future ones two. You will also automatically receive our newsletter about free projects and designs. You will NOT be requested to download the software. Having an account does not come with any obligations to you at all.

Important: Nicola’s designs and artwork are all copyrighted and may only be used for personal use or on items for sale. You may not resell these designs.

Hatch Embroidery is a very easy-to use, yet incredibly powerful machine embroidery software for the home and hobby embroiderer. It is loaded with amazing features and tools for you to be able to achieve professional results.

Currently, Hatch Embroidery software products are in popular use in over 100 countries. It is time to join the global trend and give Hatch a try! The 30-day Free Trial grants you unlimited use of all the amazing features and the 30-day Money Back Guarantee ensures that there is absolutely no risk involved.